


Rose Lalonde Creates Catastrophe, and Then Avoids It Entirely, Via Horse Tranquilizer

by Dragoneisha



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Demon Summoning, F/F, Magic, Mild Blood, Ritual Blood Use, Rituals, Silly, Tranquilizers, maybe AU?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23499580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragoneisha/pseuds/Dragoneisha
Summary: “Is it time?” Terezi asks, and she shakes with nearly as much energy as the Noir does.“It is.”Rose smiles.“.... Who’s a good boy?”
Relationships: Rose Lalonde/Terezi Pyrope
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Rose Lalonde Creates Catastrophe, and Then Avoids It Entirely, Via Horse Tranquilizer

**Author's Note:**

> this was an experiment in building tension. youll see what prompt this is for lol

The scent of incense wafts through the room. Heady goat’s blood and rosewater fill the air so heavily, it rests on the tongue, films the skin with red and pink, so when an arm is rubbed it balls up into dead-skin and blood-particle pellets, scented of iron and rose. You could smell fire too, perhaps, if there was less perfume and boiling blood. But as strong as fire is, the sheer volume of blood, incense, and rosewater makes it so the overwhelming of the senses is of a less acrid persuasion.

The steady drip of blood into the carvings in the stone floor is loud enough to echo in the rough-hewn altar room. The fire’s crackle is subtle, but there. Each droplet lands with just enough space between for a single breath.

Rose dips her fingers into rosewater. It clings, a single petal forming itself like a second skin over her fingers, and it’s so saturated that it splits in two when she spreads them out instead of choosing one of the other. Such a thing amuses her.

She licks it off her fingers. The taste is foul, but she has to imbibe at least one, according to her readings, and she’d prefer this to blood or incense ashes. This won’t give her some disease or burn her tongue so badly she cannot taste the victory she is about to pull up out of the stone floor, collar, and create a new experience with. She wants to be able to smile, with an unburnt tongue between her teeth, as she works.

Behind her, her guest shifts, and Rose’s heavy jewels (skimpy, but necessary for this particular ritual) clink together as she turns to eye them.

Terezi is trying to taste the goat’s blood.

“You would prefer not to,” Rose calls, just barely above a whisper, but in this unholy place sound carries ten times farther than it should. “I promise you that.”

“Do you,” Terezi hums, but tries nothing further. The whip-crack sharpness of their voice nearly hurts Rose’s ears. That’s what happens in an echoic chamber, she supposes. “Well, I guess if you say so.”

“Wait until it begins, and then we will both be satisfied.”

They are both silent, for a long moment. Finally, Terezi inclines their head - as close to a nod as she’ll get, considering how much she hates waiting _and_ admitting she’s wrong - so Rose turns back to her work.

She could peruse the grimoire for the chant she’s supposed to start at about this point, but it doesn’t seem necessary. The words have burned themselves into the insides of her eyelids. Rose needs not to check again, when she could just recite them.

They cannot be written again, she’s certain. If she wanted to share this, she would have to whisper it into the ears of a listener, or let them have her grimoire - which isn’t exactly an option for many reasons. Most of which boil down to the fact that she does not _want_ to. Terezi may know the words spilling like treacle from her throat, bubbling rosewater and soft petals spilling from her mouth in too-thick, viscous globs, pooling ever so slowly out over the blood-traces and dramatic gashes in the stone, giving it a glorious sheen. Rose almost smiles as she works.

It begins to take form, and even if Rose had given her eyes to Terezi for safekeeping, it would be impossible to miss. The very air changes. It crackles like ozone, all the oxygen in the room almost sucked out, as something green and glorious begins to take form. One long, slender arm, a great pair of black ears, its flesh-rending claws - the skeletal form of it takes root in the world long before its fur begins to sprout like so much hair falling from a ponytail. Its bestial tongue lolls. The Noir shakes with rage, crackling green, as he is formed against his will in this uncertain place.

He opens his mouth to roar, but it only spills rosewater.

“Is it time?” Terezi asks, and she shakes with nearly as much energy as the Noir does. 

“It is.”

Rose smiles.

“.... Who’s a good boy?”

___

“I think white nail polish.”

Rose howls at the thought, nearly belly-laughing as the Noir snaps for the next scrap of meat they tossed his way. He did sit and stay so well, he’s gotta have his little treaties.

“White? He’ll hate it! He’s called _Noir_!”

“But it will stand out as a delicious pearlized creeaaammm,” Terezi snickers, and the Noir shakes its whole, wretched body. The bow Rose has stuck on his ears bounces back and forth like a ball that’s been thrown. She has to suppress more giggles. “Come on, my lavender-berry delight! You must let me. It’ll be so tasty.”

“This is so stupid,” Rose comments, but she continues mixing up the bowl of meat and high-level horse tranquilizer so the Noir will not break all of their limbs and then eat them. “This is _silly_ in every way. I can’t believe you convinced me to do this.”

“This was your idea -”

“I can’t believe it,” Rose says, and then, “Noir!”

The Noir lifts its bestial head, slavering, eyeless, but still fixing her with a glare.

“Is your master’s refrigerator running smoothly?”

After a moment, he nods, once.

“Damn,” she sighs, a laugh threatening to bubble out of her chest. “You should go catch it.”

It takes Terezi longer than the Noir to get the joke, and he throws himself at the barrier, snarling with the kind of rage only the Noir can create. However, the dull _bonk_ of his head against a pure-magic plane does undercut his point. Next to her, Terezi cackles with laughter, falling on her back and kicking her legs. 

“Because it’s running!” Terezi yowls, like she’s been hurt. “Oh! He hates that!”

“He hates it so much,” Rose chuckles, and then, “Sit!”

The Noir does not sit. The Noir paces, sniffing for weaknesses in his little sanctuary, his wings arched in a graceful shield between his lanky body and Rose herself. 

“I can still see you.” A pause. He does not respond. “Mr. Noir. are you, perhaps, unaware that even though you cannot see me, I still know you’re there?”

He lifts his wing to snarl at her, and she tosses a handful of ground meat into the wing, which he goes for literally as quick as lightning. And then - blessedly - he sits.

He actually sits down, the absolute madman. As horrid and perhaps evil as he is, driven by violence and blood, powerful beyond belief - at the end of the day, Bec Noir is just a dog.

Terezi howls louder, and the echoic chamber makes it as loud as anything, but Rose can’t help laughing too. Summoning one of the most powerful creatures known to _anyone_ , just for the express purpose of fucking with him, is kind of a stupid move. It could have gone very wrong (well, if anyone but Rose had done it. Rose is competent enough not to muck it all up, after all) and it could have gotten a lot of people very mad at them.

However: it is hilariously funny.

“Oh fuck,” gasps Terezi, who likely has a stitch in her side at this point. She smacks weakly at Rose’s leg from her spot on the ground. “Oh fuck. Rose.”

“Hm?”

“We gotta give him pigtails.”

They have _got_ to give him pigtails.

The rest of the afternoon is spent in such ways. Goading the strongest beast in the world, telling him a joke that makes him very mad, placating him with meats and cheeses and then doing something to make him look like an idiot. He responds well, also, to chin-scratches, and neither of them even get bitten. They’re just too smart. Look at them, so clever and wry, petting the universe’s strongest bastard like he’s a samoyed they saw getting walked on a Wednesday night. 

Well, he’d be a very melanistic samoyed, but the point stands. He’s still very fluffy where he isn’t nearly insectoid. Pretty puppy.

Once they’re finished with him, he’s eaten a full bowl of meat scraps, dog treats, and tranquilizer, which has not helped his temper very much, he’s got pigtails everywhere they could find to put them, his nails are eight different colors and he has several bows and a sparkly rhinestone collar. Rose thinks he looks great. Terezi thinks he tastes like dog hair and black licorice, which he seemed to take well, at least. Something about black licorice seems to make him pretty happy, so Rose resolves to have a little of that next time. (Can dogs eat licorice?)

Terezi waves him off like they’re friends. The Noir only growls a little, so, perhaps they are. As Rose is cleaning up, Terezi loops her arm around her neck and whispers in her ear (before licking it.)

“You were delightful today, my sugar-berry lavender spice,” she rasps like that means anything. “You’re welcome to do it again, but I need out of here in the next… thirthy-two seconds, so I’ll be going.”

“What?” Rose says, and then, again, “What? Hold on. You said you’d help me clean up.”

“Yes,” Terezi says, shortly before disappearing in a minty green pop, “it was a lie.”

She’s so rude. Rose still finds herself blushing a bit, though, so she doesn’t dwell on it, instead trying top ack up viscous rosewater-blood garbage mixtures to dump into the weird hole that probably has a lindworm at the other end. Whatever’s in there like eating the results of her spells, so it’s a nice symbiotic relationship they have.

Ugh. If only she could just snap and have this all go away, like witches in movies. Sadly, her own craft takes a lot more hard work -

Something bangs at the door.

It comes to Rose’s mind, then, that it had been exactly thirty-two seconds.

“Rose!” roars the voice on the other side, and Rose can’t help but giggle, tossing aside the bucket and booking it to the other side of the echoic chamber. There’s an exit around there somewhere, she just has to find it -

Jade Harley kicks down the door, hair frizzed up like the hackles on a wolf, and yells after her, almost deafening.

“Rose Lalonde!! What did you do to my dog?!"

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to almost-casey, who asked for rose being feral and chaotic, and whats more chaotic than summoning your friends demon dog to put bows on him and needle him with stupid 2000s crank call jokes? this was gonna be all crank calls but i wanted rose and terezi to do becs nails lol


End file.
